Cross-section sensitivity of breeding ratio in a fusion-reactor blanket

Abstract

For a particular fusion-reactor-blanket configuration, the changes in the tritium breeding ratio, i.e., in the number of tritium nuclei produced in the blanket per incident neutron, due to changes in nuclear cross-section data are calculated on the basis of linear perturbation theory. Results are presented for the changes in the breeding ratio due to changes i n specific energy ranges of various partial cross sections of 6~i , 7~i , Nb, and C. The breeding ratio is found to be most sensitive to changes in the 7~i(n,n1)a,t cross section, but the sensitivity to changes in this cross section is not large. * * * zero. In terms of 6C, the quantity [HU-Hp] mu, which occurs i n Eq. 9, may be m i t t e n ' r L i 6~i L (n,2n1)a,p B. 9

Uncertainties in calculated heating and radiation damage in the toroidal field coil of a tokamak experimental power reactor due to neutron cross-section errors

“…The sensitivity calculations were carried out with the code SWANLAKE [15] in the manner described•in Refs. [6] and [7]. The response functions discussed above were used as sources in the adjoint calculations needed in SWANLAKE.…”

“…The calculations were carried out using perturbation theory to obtain sensitivity profiles for the various cross sections of interest [6,7], and these profiles were then combined with cross-section error estimates to determine the uncertainties in the quantities of interest, such as the energy deposition per unit volume in the TF coil. To carry out this procedure in complete generality, it is necessary that correlations in cross-section errors be taken into account, and this, in turn, requires that complete cross-section error data files be available [8,9].…”